


Sucker Punch

by blueincandescence



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: F/M, angsty porn, sparring sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:53:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence/pseuds/blueincandescence
Summary: In the fallout from absorbing Carol's powers, Rogue has some identity issues to work out. Logan, after angsting on his own, is a champ and helps her through.





	Sucker Punch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hurtslikeyourmouth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hurtslikeyourmouth/gifts).



> Inspired by a _delightful_ flashback sequence in englishmajor226's Fray and written for hurtslikeyourmouth's birthday — long, long overdue! Hope you enjoy!

****After the showdown, after the coma, Rogue tries the psychic-exorcism thing. The therapy thing. Medication, meditation. She thinks the only thing that might help her fall asleep at night, wake up her own damn self would be to get a running start, take a flying leap, and circle the Earth at higher and higher altitudes until the combination of gravity and stolen energy flings her into the fucking sun.

Except the power seething inside of Rogue is no longer the cosmic force Carol wielded, only a remnant. Another way of haunting her.

And, anyway, Xavier requested that she stick close. Rogue is experienced enough to know that Xavier’s requests aren’t always the unequivocally Right Thing to Do, but he is an authority on Lesser Evils. Rogue could use some of those.

So she makes do with the Danger Room. Lets Scott run her through her paces. Testing strength. Durability. Flight speed. Every time her performance wrests an impressed noise out of him, Rogue sees strategies forming in his mind. He never considered her an offensive asset to the X-Men before—her mutation too fraught, he too scrupulous. Rogue is Alpha Team now. More fraught than ever, but her crimes have taken scruples right off the table.

Besides, Scott barely knew Carol, never approved of her zealotry. He has no reason to meet Rogue’s eyes only to stare past them. He doesn’t look into the back of her head where a ghost is trapped. Never scowls when the ghost rattles her chains.

Logan left a few days after Rogue woke up. It’s been few months now.

Carol’s death had been one of those Necessary Evils. Like Jean’s, before her second resurrection. The empathy Logan had for Rogue’s situation had been as suffocating as it had been self-serving. 

Floating in a domed night sky above smoldering rubble that gives off no heat, Rogue spots a leather-clad Wolverine waiting in the wings. The obedience Scott programmed him with is the most unrealistic part of the simulation.

Rogue narrows her eyes at that damn heroic stance. Kicks up a wind worthy of Storm in her wake as she zooms right for sim-Wolverine. Leather creaks under her clenching fingers, her upward trajectory. They spin and spin. She relishes the stupid fucking look on his face.

With a vicious cry, Rogue lets go. The simulation goes careening into the laser-gaze of a nightmare Sentinel. A smoldering hunk of muscle and adamantium clunks to the ground.

From the control panel comes a feedback screech, a huff of compressed laughter. “What was that?” Scott wants to know.

Shrugging, Rogue touches down on cement fading into steel. “Cannonball Special,” she throws over her shoulder, on the prowl for something to burn away the ache in her chest.

So Logan showed up, saved her life, and took off. So what? At least there is some consistency in the Before and After.

⊗

For ninety days, Logan hasn’t been more than a one-day drive from Westchester, New York. North, west, south and back again, a semicircle of drinking, fighting, and working. Broke up a mutant fight ring in Chattanooga. Rescued a couple mutant kids in Erie from their abusive, fuckwit parents. Mostly it’s been recon. Checking in on those Church of Humanity tent revivals popping up all over the countryside.

The leads he follows are in Marie’s hand. This was her beat before. Logan catches himself, now and again, eyeing her loopy scrawl. He remembers the delicate way she held her pen, so it wouldn’t slip against her gloves. How even when her hands were bare she retained that delicate touch. He wonders how she holds her pen after.

Logan almost died bringing her back. Almost killed her. Not knowing if he succeeded is an ache deeper than muscle or Adamantium. Bone deep.

He might not ever know.

When she woke up, Logan asked the woman with Marie’s face and Carol’s scent if she was gonna be all right. She laughed. The sound of it lit out with him, an unsettling echo.

Storm thought maybe space would be a good idea. “Give her time,” she said.

Ninety days.

When Logan calls, Storm picks up. Or the Professor. He gives them his information, sets up a rendezvous point if need be. They tell him about Marie without his asking. She’s helping in the greenhouse, Storm will say. Or substitute teaching. She left the Mansion last week to see a movie with Kitty. The Professor doesn’t elaborate but there’s real pride in his voice when he tells Logan, “Rogue has a remarkably resilient mind,” and “Rogue is nothing if not adaptable.”

Resilient. Adaptable. Out-fucking-standing, but nobody’s told him fuck-all about what’s happened to the girl with the hundred-year-old eyes and the wry smile who climbed into his truck and changed the course of his whole damn life. What happens to her? Survival costs you something. Logan should know.

Pacing outside a gas station at dusk, Logan calls the Mansion. Scott picks up. No pleasantries, just takes down the information. Silence on the line. “How’s Rogue?” Logan has to growl.

“Pissed off,” Scott says.

Logan snaps, “At what?”

“The world. You, mainly.”

It’s a nine-hour drive to Westchester. The Mansion is early-morning quiet, but Logan follows his gut and his senses to the lower levels.

He finds her in the training gym clobbering a punching bag with her fists. Skintight black fabric moves with every muscle. The supple, pale skin between her shorts and her sports bra glistens with sweat. Not from exertion, Logan can guess, but from the force of holding back. The bag rattles on its hinges. Her touch gets more delicate.

Logan stands out of her eyeline, breathing through his nose, letting the scent of her soak into his skin. Jesus fucking Christ, it’s Marie. It’s Marie he smells and no one else. The relief is staggering. Logan would take a knee if he could move an inch.

Marie’s punches get wilder, sending sweat spinning to the floor. Her scent grows sharper, thicker. His mouth fills with saliva. The animal recognizes a Marie the man never let himself think on. With a crunch and a bang, the punching bag rips off its hinges and plants itself in the far wall.

“Go to hell, Logan,” Marie snarls.

Christ, he’s never been so hard so fast. He’s dizzy with it.

Marie in her prime. A woman grown, wisened. All that inward strength made manifest. She rounds on him. Eyes so dark they steal the light. Hair brown again, those white streaks the badge of honor she always wore them as. Her bare hands are balled into fists.

Around the first in his throat, Logan manages, “Missed you, kid.”

⊗

Kid. Rogue curls her lip, knowing she should hate it.

Only it hits her square in the chest. The meaning of it.

Logan hasn’t called her kid in a long damn time. Not after Carol, not before, either. Not when she was undercover with the Brotherhood, keeping herself afloat on pure bravado. She always thought it was the anger he disapproved of.

But she’s standing here seething spitfire, and Logan’s looking at her like she’s the sun. Bright. Painful. But warm, vital. Life itself.

Tears prick Rogue’s eyes. “Fuck off,” she says.

A scowl pinches Logan’s brow, loosens up the rest of him. He elbows out of his jacket. “In the mood to spar, huh? I could use a stretch.” Logan goes over to the ring and leans his impressive frame against the ropes.

Folding her arms, Rogue indicates the punching bag with a flick of her ponytail. “It ain’t like it was,” she warns.

With a shrug, Logan loses his boots and ducks into the ring. “There’s been plenty of times you’d’ve sent me through a wall if you could.” He sets his stance, motioning her forward. “Here’s your chance.”

Rogue leaps and hovers over the mat, forcing Logan to stare up at her. He’s seen Carol fly, seen Rogue-as-Carol, too. The look on his face marks it the first time Logan has seen Rogue fly, and it’s a gift. Whether he knows it or not.

She touches down in front of him. Logan has almost a foot on her, so she’s the one looking up. His nostrils flare, and the ache in Rogue’s core is the reason why. The cure had been wearing off the first time she’d held this man inside of her. Her first time. The edge of desperation carried them through. A closing window. A one-time kindness. She’s had him since, part and parcel of that bravado.

Squaring up with him this time doesn’t feel like bravado. It feels like an even match.

An even match. A fair fight. Good old fashioned comradery. Carol and Logan fucked. Rogue knew that already, but it’s a different kind of knowing now.

Rouge punches Logan square in his rock-hard abs.

He heaves, bowing forward. Rogue holds onto the strap of his white tank, forehead on his as they breathe through it together. Hazel eyes meet hers. Logan’s snarl snags on a grin. “Who taught you to play dirty like that?”

A ferocious kind of love surges through Rogue as she sends her knee straight up. Logan blocks it with his hands, but the force of her momentum sends him into the ropes.

“Fucking hell,” he moans, already on his feet but flexing his hands.

“Lot more where that came from, sugar.”

Logan’s assessing stare drags from her toes to her trembling knees. From the ache between her thighs, past her taut belly to her peaked nipples. Her pulse jumps harder in her throat under his stare. Her lips part. Her eyes go hazy with need. On a growl that sounds like it gurgled straight up from his cock, Logan says, “Show me.”

They spar.

“Holy shit,” Logan says when she tornado kicks him out of the ring. “Jesus,” he says when she takes a teeth-breaking punch to the mouth with a perfect smile.

Rogue is all instinct. Her skin feels right sliding over muscle memory. If she thinks about it, she’ll feel Carol. Logan, too. Every mental interloper on down to David. But she’d have to think about it. She can choose this instinct, this not thinking.

This being herself.

Rogue thinks she hates Logan for realizing before she did. For needing him to confirm it.

He wraps his arms around her torso, flipping Rogue down on the mat with his knee pressed between her thighs. Rogue lets out a grateful cry. Cants her hips. Blessed friction.

“Fuck,” Logan grits out, shoulders dipping.

A weakness Rogue exploits, rolling him flat on his back and perching herself on the bulge in his jeans. She circles her hips, intent on the little sparks going off behind Logan’s eyes.

His fingers sink into the flesh over her hips. “You trying to kill me?” he grits out.

Rogue leans forward to suck and draw at his smirking lips. The urge to take him into her mind is so strong, but she’s stronger. “I always had that power,” she tells him before driving her tongue between his teeth and rubbing out her anger onto his constricted cock. Her body is hers in a way it hasn't been in a long damn time.

⊗

Logan comes in his jeans like a hormone-addled teenager, arching his back and lifting Marie’s knees off the mat. She moans into his mouth, soaks the front of her shorts.

Marie pulls back, breathless and triumphant and so fucking alive. “Think that means I win.” Wiggling over him, she arches a brow in appreciation of his already tightening erection. “What’s my prize?”

Logan gets to his feet, his whole body protesting as Marie slides down to stand on the mat. “Got something in mind,” he tells her, chin angled so low his forehead is almost resting on her crown. Inching a claw out between his knuckles, he waits for Marie to widen her stance for him. While she holds her breath, he slits a hole in her shorts.

He presses Marie to him, letting her naked scent overwhelm him a moment.

Then he backs up. “You over-relying on strength, or have you been practicing takedowns?”

Marie’s jaw drops. She laughs, the sweet, shocked sound caressing his ears. Her hands find her hips. Her body is vibrating. “You are disgraceful.”

Putting on his no-nonsense instructor's face, he says, “We training or lollygagging?”  

Tongue pressed to her teeth a second, Marie tightens her ponytail and tucks back her white streaks. “Training, sir.”

Fuck if that doesn’t hit him right in the gut. All those heady days teaching her, with her smelling of bittersweet worry over her covered skin, of musky embarrassment for the sharp desire neither of them could acknowledge. Tore him up, making her feel that way. Feeling that way himself. No recourse except to wait it out, make sure it wasn’t a teenage phase or hero worship or some fucked up consequence of survival.

“If anybody catches us,” Marie tells him, getting her stance right, “this was all your perverted idea.”

“Talk ain’t action,” Logan says, his focus on the muscle in her thighs, the grace of her movement as she sprints toward him and leaps like a wildcat. Her legs wrap his neck, the combination of her weight and scent sending him crashing to the ground.

Marie crouches over his face. Logan rips open her shorts, letting the animal feast.

Inarticulate mewls break Marie down on top of him, her thighs hugging his ears. He licks and sucks and nips until she’s pounding the mat for mercy. Logan grips her legs for something to hold onto, to feel the deep tremors. He can’t breathe but he can’t stop.

“Son of a bitch,” Marie moans, well on her way to another orgasm. “I was so mad at you. I was so—fucking—ah!” She tries to buck up, get away from his relentless mouth, but he follows her, flips her onto her ass, and buries his head in her thighs from a new angle. She comes again, his name the only thing on her lips.

Panting, Logan rests his cheek on her quaking belly. He laps at the sheen of sweat, kisses her belly button. Marie’s fingers unfist from his hair. Stroke his nape. When they both catch their breaths, she tugs at his roots.

Logan gets to his knees. Marie tears open his jeans and settles her heels on his back. Logan leans over her, cock brushing her tender opening. Into her damp hair, he asks, “You still mad at me?”

“No.” Her lips part over that sweet gap between her teeth. Her eyes are warm and brown taking him in, scowl and all. “I needed you to go.” She smooths his ruffled beard. “And I needed you to come back.”

Pushing forward in increments, Logan rocks into Marie’s plush heat. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Marie says, voice cracking on an emotion that constricts Logan's chest.

They grip each other, lend each other strength. Hold each other steady as they fly to pieces again and again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading (and for continuing to enjoy this ship)! Comments give me life <3


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